Z71v...battery causes AC adapter to burn up and etc.

First off, this laptop has been a nightmare from hell for me. Heck I almost gave up on it and let it sit in it's bag for about 4 months. My motherboard has been replaced, my original battery had issues like most other people. My current replacement battery has followed the same footsteps and within months a 100% charge gets me a whopping 5 minutes of battery life. I'm also on my 4th ac adapter which I bought today.

I visited Asus and they said they couldn't do anything about my fried ac adapter and defective battery because the warranty on those was only 1 year.

Anyways today I thought it might be nice to be able to use my laptop again, so I bought a cheap $18 universal adapter (yeah shame on me).

After about 20 minutes, I am greeted by that oh-so familiar plastic burning smell. My new cheap adapter is burning up just as expected. I hold the adapter in my hand, or try to, and instantly get visions of my house going up in flames.

I must admit, I'm not the safest guy out there. If it works, it works. But the plastic burning smell was starting to get too me, so I had to pull the plug.

I started thinking about how my battery charging light was always on. I have not seen this light go off for years it seems. As a last resort, I decided to pull out my almost useless battery to see if I could get the ac adapter to stop burning and heating up.

Well it's been about 8 hours and my ac adapter is only slightly warm and the burning smell went away.

I've emailed Asus about my findings, but I'm not expecting them to do anything to help me.

I've seen this video online called "Laptop Battery Hack", where a guy cracks open a depleted laptop battery to find 6 AA Li-ion batteries. He replaces those batteries with fresh ones and voila, it works.

I was thinking about doing the same thing with my Z71v battery, once I get the email of rejection from Asus.

The first step would be to test the voltage of the batteries with a voltmeter to see if they are dead. If they aren't dead...then there's something else that is the problem. I would pretty much give up or go for an after-market battery here.

But if the batteries are dead, I would attempt to solder fresh Li-ion batteries and see how things go from there.

 

No lose situation. Go for it.

 

I'm sure the OP knows this, but for the rest of readers around here the obvious probably needs to be pointed out as it wasn't clear from your post -- the cells in Asus' batteries (and everyone else's, for that matter) are NOT standard AA Li-ion batteries off the shelf from your local retail store. If that was what was in the video you mention, it's a hoax.

There was a posting on the NBR main page, or was it in the Asus forum, a while back where the user cracked open the casing, bought new generic laptop cells, and then soldered everything back together again. As I recall, he got 50% of original charge back and the ACPI battery meter wouldn't work.

If you make a mistake and the voltages are wrong or the cells power is compromised, your z71 could be converted from a piece of usable (wired) hardware to a very large grey paperweight. Unless you completely know what you're doing, you'd probably be better off considering someplace like batteryrefill.com and let experienced techs do the work .

 

Ah ok it's been tried. Thanks for the headsup ClearSkies. 50% of charge is about 90 minutes. 85 minutes longer than my current charge - ACPI. Not worth the hassle and risk.

I'll look into batteryrefill.com.

So the problem wasn't the original cells? Is the problem the actual design of the battery casing? I have to find that post.

 

I think the original problem was a combination of the cells and the smart battery controller board. I sent one of my 2005 batteries to battery refill in early 2007, got the cells replaced, and it worked well for just over a year, but then battery wear rapidly accumulated to the point that now when fully charged, it's only at 39% of its original capacity, but it quickly will drop to 5% or so and only lasts 30 minutes. The newer battery I got at the beginning of 2007 is at 68% of its original capacity and lasts 2 hours. The modular bay battery that I got at the end of 2005 is at 73% of its original capacity and lasts an hour and a half by itself. This makes me think that there's something about the electronics of the faulty 2005 batteries beyond just the cells.

 

Djembe, thanks for sharing that information with us. So the design of the 1st generation Z71v batteries could very likely have poorly designed smart battery controller boards. I guess there's no point in replacing my batteries cells then. I have suffered the dreaded "insta-drop" in battery capacity too, with both my 1st and current "newly designed" replacement battery. My batteries would report around 1 hour of life left, but quickly drop to 30 minutes or less within minutes. I get about 2 minutes of battery life now if I'm lucky and my charge light never goes off. I have to run from one wall outlet to another, if I need to move around in my house, and somtimes I don't even make it before the battery dies out.

I would like to get one of the newer batteries that you got at the beginning of 2007. 68% capacity and a 2 hour life sounds like your newer battery is working just fine. If I were to purchase a new battery, how could I make sure I'm getting a properly designed battery?

 

YOU CAN BRING THE HORSE TO THE WATER...